‘Songs of Separation’

The music of African-American composer William Grant Still comes alive at the Witherspoon Presbyterian Church in Princeton.

By: Susan Van Dongen

TIMEOFF/MARK CZAJKOWSKI

Soprano Beverly Owens, music director at Witherspoon Presbyterian Church, will perform William Grant Still’s rarely heard tone poem as part of the church’s Noontime Recital Series May 4. Judith Anne Still, Mr. Still’s daughter, will present a lecture and slide presentation that evening.

   William Grant Still, America’s first major African-American composer of serious orchestral and operatic work, fought a lifelong battle to be accepted by the classical music world. Critics, publishers, producers and other composers seemed to say "you cannot achieve this goal because you are black," but he ignored them and kept creating.
   A deeply spiritual man, he was guided by a dream where he saw his manuscripts bound in gold and knew his compositions would be heard and embraced someday — just not in his lifetime.
   "In the dream, he said was in a room with a television screen that covered an entire wall, and he also saw his books of music," says his daughter Judith Anne Still, who runs William Grant Still Music in Flagstaff, Ariz. "He believed he was looking into the future and knew when television screens were that big, his music would start to become popular, and would make money. So here we are, just about there.
   "My father and mother never gave up because they felt their work was important — they knew the music was supposed to help raise people’s consciousness," she continues. "When a piece like ‘Summerland’ is played on the radio, we’ll get calls from all over the country trying to find out where the composer’s music can be found."
   Ms. Still will be coming to the Witherspoon Presbyterian Church in Princeton May 4 to give a presentation on her father’s legacy. In addition, soprano Beverly Owens, music director at the church, will perform Songs of Separation, a rarely heard tone poem by Mr. Still — part of the church’s Noontime Recital Series. The evening lecture with Ms. Still also includes a performance of the composer’s work by the Jubilante Trio.
   "I think it will be well-received here," Ms. Owens says. "In fact, I’ll be interested in doing more of his songs as well as choral works in the future. I didn’t know how interested I’d become in his music until I started working on this program. I’ve never sung any of his music before.
   "He had a great love affair with the voice," she continues. "Considering that he wasn’t a singer himself, I find his vocal writing exceptional. His songs are very well constructed and also very challenging."
   Various African-American poets, including Langston Hughes, set Songs of Separation to lyrics. Ms. Owen is perplexed as to why this piece and so many of Mr. Still’s other works were once dismissed as "Negro music" when the tonalities transcend color and ethnicity.
   "You don’t have any concept that this is a black man composing the music," she says. "There are elements that might sound American. But on the other hand, these ‘Songs of Separation’ sound almost impressionistic — Debussy could have written them."
   The truth is, before the Civil Rights movement, classical music was still a segregated world, a place where critics would write of Mr. Still’s work as "reminiscent of alligators, swamps and (black children) eating watermelons," according to his daughter.
   "He endured some awful prejudice but the public loved his music," Ms. Still says. "One of the things I talk about in the slide show is how my father’s work was entered anonymously in a competition to see who would write the music for the 1939 World’s Fair. He submitted two pieces and the judges liked both. But when they found out (the composer was black), they balked — they were against a black guy writing the theme."
   Ms. Still says to this day there is some confusion as to who wrote the theme for the 1939 World’s Fair.
   "I just saw a special on PBS and even they said Kay Swift and Ira Gershwin wrote it," Ms. Still says. "But the slide show doesn’t all focus on ‘the bad stuff,’ though."
   Despite the roadblocks, Mr. Still had some incredible achievements before he died in 1978.
   Born in Mississippi in 1895, his parents were teachers and musicians. Mr. Still’s first instrument was the violin — he began lessons when his widowed mother moved to Little Rock, Ark., to teach high school English. He later studied music at Wilberforce University in Wilberforce, Ohio, then at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, where the faculty established a scholarship for him.
   He played and arranged for numerous orchestras in the early days of the big bands, employed by such luminaries as W. C. Handy, Sophie Tucker, Paul Whiteman and Artie Shaw. Then Mr. Still struck up a friendship with Howard Hanson, director of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, who encouraged his further pursuits in classical music.
   Among the legion of awards he collected, Mr. Still won Guggenheim and Rosenwald fellowships, as well as commissions from the Columbia Broadcasting System, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Southern Conference Educational Fund.
   He was the first African-American in the United States to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra and the first to conduct a distinguished symphony orchestra in the United States. In 1949, he also was the first African-American to have an opera produced by a large company in the U.S. when Troubled Island was done at the City Center of Music and Drama in New York.
   Although Mr. Still wrote more than 150 compositions — ballets, symphonies, chamber works and arrangements of folk themes, plus instrumental, choral and solo vocal works — he died before a single work was recorded. Now, his daughter says there are more than 50 CDs of William Grant Still’s work available and his pieces are aired tens of thousands of times on the radio each year.
   The idea for a recital and lecture in Princeton was sparked when church treasurer Robert Ellis was practicing Mr. Still’s Suite for Violin and Piano, which he’ll perform in June at Witherspoon Presbyterian.
   "That’s what got us started on this discussion about William Grant Still," Ms. Owens says. A Plainsboro resident, Ms. Owens studied at Jersey City State College, New York University and Westminster Choir College of Rider University, but says she doesn’t remember ever hearing about Mr. Still until now.
   "I went back and looked at one of my textbooks for a course in American music and he was mentioned just briefly," she says. "I’ve had a lot of music history courses but I don’t remember talking about him at all. And I’m sure my experience isn’t unique."
   "I was thinking about Bernstein and Copland — Still was writing in the same era," she continues. "I wondered why their work was so well-known and his wasn’t. So we found the Web site and learned that his daughter was keeping his music alive. I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to bring him to Princeton.’"
Beverly Owens will perform William Grant Still’s Songs of Separation at Witherspoon Presbyterian Church, 124 Witherspoon St., Princeton, May 4, noon. Judith Anne Still will give a lecture and slide presentation on her father’s life May 4, 7:30 p.m. The Jubilante Trio will perform. Free admission. Violinist Robert Ellis and pianist Lonieta Cornwall will give a recital of Mr. Still’s music at the church June 1. For information, call (609) 924-1666. William Grant Still on the Web: www.williamgrantstillmusic.com